Gillard hails COAG health deal

Colin Barnett, Anna Bligh, Kristina Keneally, Julia Gillard and Paul Henderson at a press conference after an agreement was reached on health reform.

Andrew Taylor: AAP

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has emerged from a tough day of negotiations with state and territory leaders with a national agreement in place on health reform.

After more than seven hours of talks at the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting at Parliament House in Canberra on Sunday, the leaders finally put pen to paper on a heads of agreement for a health reform plan that Ms Gillard described as a "huge step forward".

Under the new deal, the Federal and State Governments will contribute money into a national funding pool to pay for the health system.

The funds will then be paid out to the states and territories on the basis of how many operations or procedures they perform.

The deal will deliver another $16 billion in federal money for hospitals over 10 years, and a national body to report on how the money is spent.

Ms Gillard said with the heads of agreement in place, the technical details would now be worked through.

She said there needed to be further negotiation before the agreement could be finalised, but was hopeful that can be achieved by the middle of the year.

Ms Gillard said the in-principle deal would provide more hospital beds, more community control, and ensure money was not wasted.

The deal also includes increasing after-hours GP clinics, streamlining other primary healthcare services, and giving communities more say in the services they get.

It is understood the deal, which was put forward last week, was held up as the leaders argued over Ms Gillard's proposed national health funding pool, which the Prime Minister said would boost transparency.

Ms Gillard said leaders had agreed to have one body distribute the money instead of having separate bodies for each state and territory, and stressed the federal, state and territory governments would now be "equal partners in growth".

"It [multiple distributing bodies] would have risked over time that information was not truly comparable nationally," Ms Gillard said.

"As a result of today's agreement we are sweeping away those eight separate bureaucracies for one national funding body.

"While this has been a very long day, it has been a very successful outcome.

"[We will be] able to ensure hospitals around the nation are transparently and fairly funded and that information between states is truly comparable."

Now that the deal is done, the states stand to receive more than $16.4 billion extra for their health systems by the end of this decade.

As well as the signed heads of agreement, Ms Gillard also secured a jointly-signed national partnership agreement dealing with targets in emergency departments and elective surgery.

Ms Gillard said many of the elements of the agreement would be implemented from July 1.

Spirited negotiations

NT Chief Minister Paul Henderson said at various stages throughout the day it appeared as though an agreement would not be reached.

Several of those present were forced to arrange to stay Sunday night in Canberra because they missed their opportunity to fly back to their homes.

The Prime Minister abandoned a bid to claw back a third of the states' GST money, killing off another signature Kevin Rudd policy, and is now planning for the Federal Government and the states to share the growing cost of health equally.

But premiers and chief ministers were asking throughout the day how they could ensure that money paid into the national pool by one state was not redistributed to another part of the country.

They also questioned if the pool was even necessary, with some suggesting it could be just an extra layer of bureaucracy.

As they went into the meeting today the premiers and chief ministers were generally positive, but not promising anything.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh had said the proposed model created three new levels of unnecessary bureaucracy, while South Australian Premier Mike Rann said he would only sign up if the same level of funding that was negotiated in December was guaranteed.

But at the end of the day Ms Gillard said a deal had been reached thanks to all parties working together with "a spirit of goodwill and cooperation".

Mr Rann called it a big reform that did not come easily.

"It was eight hours of hard yakka but I think that's what people would expect of us," he said.

Opposition criticism

Federal Opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton seized on the fact that the Prime Minister and state and territory leaders have left some of the details to be worked out by bureaucrats.

"Even though Julia Gillard had backflipped and compromised every position that she held, she was still not able to reach an agreement or a deal," he said.

"And it seemed at the eleventh hour when that was apparent she decided that she would reach a heads of agreement with the detail to be worked out by health bureaucrats.

"And it just says to me that Julia Gillard hasn't struck a deal despite all of the Kevin Rudd-style spin."

Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott earlier accused state Labor leaders of falsely orchestrating a tough negotiation for the benefit of the Prime Minister.

"I think it's pretty clear from what the premiers have said on the way in about this deal being very difficult to come by that they're trying to carefully stage-manage this to look like it's some kind of a victory for the Prime Minister," he said.

The leaders spent the first part of the day's meeting discussing disaster recovery in the wake of the recent floods, cyclones and fires.